Aerobo's Suresh Kumar

An engineer's perspective on the past, present, and future of drone technology

WHILE DRONE PILOTS and cam ops are often in the lime­ light, it’s drone engineers who are the ones working with cutting ­edge unmanned aerial vehicle technology. We sat down with aerospace engineer Suresh Kumar to hear about his function in a drone­ services company and his technical perspective on the recent maturation of the drone industry.

RotorDrone: How did you get into this field?

Suresh Kumar: I have a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Cincinnati, but I had a specific interest in multirotor drones early on. Five years ago, multirotor drones weren’t very popular. Everyone was using fixed ­wing drones or helicopters. Multirotor drones appealed to me because of their simplicity. Drones and helis that have one big rotor are hard to control because the mechanism has to achieve a longitudinal and a lateral pitch change for any change in direction. Even the smallest mechanical failure could cause a critical failure. Multirotor drones are much simpler and, therefore, easier to build and control in the commercial space. I saw their commercial potential and decided to focus my master’s thesis on dynamic systems and control for multirotor drones.

Tell us a little about what you do now.

I’m currently the lead aerospace engineer at Aerobo, a company that specializes in highland aerial cinematography for the media and entertainment space. As one of the first members of the team, I designed and helped build their proprietary heavy­ lift platforms. Day to day, I’m in charge of managing, testing, and assigning equipment to various drone jobs.

Why do you build custom drones? Aren’t there plenty of commercial drones on the market?